Zoomingmamma

Are you not asking yourself what a zoomingmamma is?

The answer is simple – a mother on wheels!
That’s me and this is the story of why I call myself Zoomingmamma.

Having been born with Cerebral Palsy (that’s another blog maybe) I always used wheelchairs, both motorized and manual from time to time. When my son was born, the wheelchair use changed to most of the time because doing things like carrying him from room to room was much easier and safer for us both. Outside I didn’t need a baby carriage. My husband would plop him on my lap and off we went.

Off we went alright, when my son was six weeks old, we travelled from The Netherlands to New York to introduce him to my parents. While we were on the east coast, we decided to travel to my favorite city, Washington, D.C.. The six hour drive took us to an old friend who lived there gave us the grand tour only he knows how to give.

As we headed west there was one more stop I needed to make and will be forever grateful I did! We stopped at the house of Trish Day a woman I met through an internet forum/website. She started the Parents With Disabilities Online Website - http://www.disabledparents.net/It was the resource/information website that answered many of the questions I had during my pregnancy. I was thirty-five, pregnant with my first, had CP and lived in a foreign country. Boy did I have questions. Although feedback came from all members of the website, all my questions were also answered by Trish. We exchanged instant messenger names and phone numbers so we could chat. We really connected and wanted to meet each other so my husband, six-week old son and I had lunch with her and her family at their home in Maryland. It was like reuniting with old friends.

After a wonderful lunch she gave me a book – Mamma Zooms by Jane Cowen Fletcher. Handing it to me she said, “This is nothing really. I have several copies. I give them to disabled mothers as a gift when I meet them. I just love the book because it shows just how many different things a mother in a wheelchair can be.”

She was wrong. That book was anything but nothing! As I turned the pages, tears came to my eyes. Those crisp, colorful pages showed me all the things I could and just maybe would be to my son. The last page was the most impressive – “…Then mama is just mama, and that’s how I like her best.” No words could ever thank Trish enough for giving me that book. No words could ever express what that book meant to me on that day or today.

Today I use that book as a teaching guide at my son’s school. Although my son is now in a higher grade, I volunteer my time once a week in his old third grade class, so that the children come in contact with someone who has a disability. The teacher and I feel that if this interaction is done at an early age, acceptance of people with disabilities will take place while ignorance and fear become less.

So if you see a woman with a child either standing on the back of a motorized wheelchair or sitting on the armrest, think of me – Zoomingmamma!